America has adopted a tough all-or-nothing position at the Cancún climate change summit, fuelling speculation of a walk-out if developing countries do not meet its demands.

At the opening of the talks at Cancún, the US climate negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, made clear America wanted a "balanced package" from the summit.

That's diplomatic speak for a deal that would couple the core issues for the developing world – agreement on climate finance, technology, deforestation – with US demands for emissions actions from emerging economies and a verifiable system of accounting for those cuts.

In a briefing with foreign journalists in Washington, the chief climate envoy, Todd Stern, was blunt. "We're either going to see progress across the range of issues or we're not going to see much progress," said Stern. "We're not going to race forward on three issues and take a first step on other important ones. We're going to have to get them all moving at a similar pace."

In the run-up to the Cancún talks, Stern has said repeatedly that America will not budge from its insistence that fast-emerging economies such as India and China commit to reducing emissions and to an inspection process that will verify those actions.

The hard line – which some in Washington have seen as ritual diplomatic posturing – has fuelled speculation that the Obama administration could be prepared to walk out of the Cancún talks.

Both of Buskerud, Telemark and Aust-Agder, it was cold set records Thursday night. Never before has it been so cold in November in the three counties.

In the Hovden were measured minus 29.4 degrees Thursday night. There are three degrees colder than the old record from 2002. During the 140 years of measurement stations have been operating, there has never been so cold at Hovden in November.

- It's the coldest that has been measured by the official weather station of the meteorological department in Aust-Agder in the last 140 years. This is very special, "says Bernt Lie vêrstatistikkar nrk.no.

Monday, November 29, 2010

The latest round of international climate talks beginning this week in Cancun will begin to formulate a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012. For obvious reasons, the mainstream media and IPCC don't mention the scorecard for the Kyoto Protocol, which has been in place since February 16, 2005:

Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead.

Maybe it was just a bad dream.

Just a year ago, 15,000 of the world’s leaders, diplomats, and UN officials were gearing up to descend on Copenhagen to forge a global treaty that would save the planet. The world’s media delivered massive coverage. Important newspapers printed urgent front-page calls for action, and a popular new U.S. President waded in to put his reputation on the line. The climate talks opened with a video showing a little girl’s nightmare encounter with drought, storms, eruptions, floods and other man-made climate disasters. “Please help the world,” she pleads.

After two weeks of chaos, the talks collapsed in a smouldering heap of wreckage. The only surprise was that this outcome should have come as a surprise to so many intelligent people. These people actually seemed to believe that experts and politicians have supernatural powers to predict the future and control the climate. They believed that experts know how fast temperatures will rise by when, and what the consequences will be, and that we know what to do about it. They believed that despite the recent abject failure of Kyoto (to say nothing of other well-intentioned international treaties), the nations of the world would willingly join hands and sacrifice their sovereignty in order to sign on to a vast scheme of unimaginable scope, untold cost and certain damage to their own interests.

Copenhagen was not a political breakdown. It was an intellectual breakdown so astonishing that future generations will marvel at our blind credulity. Copenhagen was a classic case of the emperor with no clothes.

Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead. Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme is dead. Chicago’s carbon-trading market is dead. The European Union’s supposed reduction in carbon emissions has been exposed as a giant fraud. (The EU is actually responsible for 40 per cent more CO2 today than it was in 1990, if you count the goods and services it consumed as opposed to the ones that it produced.) Public interest in climate change has plunged, and the media have radically reduced their climate coverage.

The biggest loser is the environmental movement. For years, its activists neglected almost everything but climate change. They behaved as if they’d cornered the market on wisdom, truth and certainty, and they demonized anyone who dared to disagree. They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media, who parroted their claims like Sunday-school children reciting Scripture. No interest group in modern times has been so free from skepticism, scrutiny or simple accountability as the environmental establishment.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

UPDATE 11/29/10: John O'Sullivan reports, "Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory' has this morning stormed to #1 in the Amazon best sellers list in the sciences section."

email from John O'Sullivan:

Book Launch Exposes UN Climate Science in Another Scandal

Newly released science book revelation is set to heap further misery on UN global warming researchers.

Authors of a new book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ claim they have debunked the widely established greenhouse gas theory of climate change. In the first of what they say will be a series of sensational statements to promote the launch of their book, they attack a cornerstone belief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - what is known as the “carbon isotope argument.”

Mišo Alkalaj, is one of 24 expert authors of this two-volume publication, among them are qualified climatologists, prominent skeptic scientists and a world leading math professor. It is Alkalaj’s chapter in the second of the two books that exposes the fraud concerning the isotopes 13C/12C found in carbon dioxide (CO2).

If true, the disclosure may possibly derail last-ditch attempts at a binding international treaty to ‘halt man-made global warming.’ At minimum the story will be sure to trigger a fresh scandal for the beleaguered United Nations body.

Do Human Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Exhibit a Distinct Signature?

The low-key internal study focused on the behavior of 13C/12C isotopes within carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules and examined how the isotopes decay over time. Its conclusions became the sole basis of claims that ‘newer’ airborne CO2 exhibits a different and thus distinct ‘human signature.’ The paper was employed by the IPCC to give a green light to researchers to claim they could quantify the amount of human versus natural proportions just from counting the number of isotopes within that ‘greenhouse gas.’

Alkalaj, who is head of Center for Communication Infrastructure at the "J. Stefan" Institute, Slovenia says because of the nature of organic plant decay that emits CO2, such amass spectrometry analysis is bogus. Therefore, it is argues, IPCC researchers are either grossly incompetent or corrupt because it is impossible to detect whether carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is of human or organic origin.

Skeptics Out to Derail Cancun Climate Conference?

Cynics are already claiming ‘Isotope-gate’ is more than just a promotional stunt to hype this book launch. They say its also deliberately timed to disrupt the latest major international climate conference in Cancun, Mexico (November 29th - December 10th).

The Cancun Climate conference (COP 16) is seen as a make or break attempt by world leaders to secure a binding international treaty to limit emissions of carbon dioxide after the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit last year. Copenhagen was undermined by the Climategate revelations and this latest attempt by skeptics may be a repeat.

The ‘Isotope-gate’ story is one of many planned promotional releases from the book and this publication is bound to cause embarrassment to delegates in Mexico if the revelations it contains become widely known.

Worryingly for Cancun (and the IPCC) this new book makes far bolder claims than have been made before by skeptics. Its authors say they have scientifically and mathematically disproved the greenhouse gas theory. The theory is the bedrock of all scientific claims that humans are responsible for climate change.

According to Miso the fatal assumption made by the IPCC is that the atmospheric concentration of the 13C isotope (distinctive in prehistoric plants) is fixed. They also assume C3-type plants no longer exist so would need to be factored into the equations. Indeed, as Miso points out such plants, “make up 95% of the mass of all current plant life.”

Therefore, decay of 95% of present-day plant material is constantly emitting the 13C-deficient carbon dioxide supposedly characteristic of coal combustion—and CO2 emitted by plant decay is an order of magnitude greater than all human-generated emissions.

‘Isotope-gate’ is Twin Brother of Himalayagate

But a more sinister twist to the story is not just that the researchers erred in mistakenly overlooking the flaws about the 13C isotope, but that they never referred the analysis to outsider verification.

As with the Himalayagate controversy, the Prentice paper was never reviewed beyond the secretive four walls of UN climate alarmism; it relied entirely on an internal uncorroborated source.

On this cynical practice Mišo observes, “Few readers will be bothered to follow the trail all the way and especially not the ‘policymakers.’ But the few that do frequently find out that the argument is circular (A quotes B and B quotes A), etc.”

Thus, there exists no proof of any such distinct ‘human signal’ anywhere in samples of atmospheric CO2. Therefore, once again, the public has been shown compelling evidence of how it was duped by junk science.

An article posted this week on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPPC) & CO2science.org websites shows the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) extended to Antarctica with temperatures as warm as the present and that "the present state of reduced ice on the western Antarctic Peninsula is not unprecedented," even within the last thousand years, which stands in stark contrast to the long-held claim of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that late-20th-century warmth was globally unprecedented over the past one to two millennia." The Medieval Warming Project map site clearly shows that the MWP was a global phenomenon during which temperatures exceeded the present in most studies:

"In a paper published in the July 2010 issue of Geology, Hall et al. (2010) note that (1) "over the past 50 years, the Antarctic Peninsula warmed ~2°C," that (2) "rapid breakups have destroyed several small, thin ice shelves fringing the Antarctic Peninsula," and that (3) removal of ice-shelf back pressure resulted in a marked increase in seaward flow of glaciers discharging into the now abandoned embayments," leading them to ask a most important question: "Is the recent warming of the Antarctic Peninsula unique in the Holocene?"

In an attempt to answer this question, the three researchers "examined organic-rich sediments exposed by recent retreat of the Marr Ice Piedmont on western Anvers Island near Norsel Point," where they say that glaciers "have been undergoing considerable retreat in response to the well-documented warming," which led to their sampling area being deglaciated about six years ago. And based on what they found and describe as "the first record of terrestrial organic material exposed by recently retreating ice that bears on past glacier extent and climate in this sensitive region," Hall et al. conclude that "ice was at or behind its present position at ca. 700-970 cal. yr B.P. and during at least two earlier times, represented by the dates of shells, in the mid-to-late Holocene," which means, in their words, that "the present state of reduced ice on the western Antarctic Peninsula is not unprecedented," even within the last thousand years, which finding stands in stark contrast to the long-held claim of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that late-20th-century warmth was globally unprecedented over the past one to two millennia.

This finding thus prompted the U.S. scientists to ask another important question: "How widespread is the event at 700-970 cal yr B.P.?" Starting first with the Antarctic Peninsula itself, they write that (1) "Khim et al. (2002) noted a pronounced high-productivity (warm) event between 500 and 1000 cal. yr B.P. in magnetic susceptibility records from Bransfield Basin," that (2) "dates of moss adjacent to the present ice front in the South Shetland Islands (Hall, 2007) indicate that ice there was no more extensive between ca. 650 and 825 cal. yr B.P. than it is now," and that (3) "Bentley et al. (2009) reported that evidence for warming at this time seems restricted to the Western Antarctic Peninsula and is seen best in some (although not all) marine cores (i.e., Domack et al., 2003)," all of which observations suggest, in their words, that "at least in the western and northern Antarctic Peninsula area," the warmth they discovered "is not an anomalous event."

Looking a little further abroad, Hall et al. say their "evidence for reduced ice extent at 700-970 cal. yr B.P. is consistent with tree-ring data from New Zealand that show a pronounced peak in summer temperatures (Cook et al., 2002)," and that "New Zealand glaciers were retracted at the same time (Schaefer et al., 2009)." Moreover, they add that their data "are compatible with a record of glacier fluctuations from southern South America, the continental landmass closest to Antarctica (Strelin et al., 2008)." And, last of all, the timing of the warm interval discovered by Hall et al. (AD 1030-1300) compares well with that of the entire globe, as may be seen on CO2 Science's Interactive Map and Time Domain Plot of their Medieval Warm Period Project.

In conclusion, as ever more relevant evidence is acquired, the case for an equivalent or warmer-than-present Medieval Warm Period grows ever stronger, continually weakening the climate-alarmist claim that the planet's current warmth can only be explained by including the warming they believe to have been produced by the increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases that were experienced over the course of the 20th century, all of which gases' concentrations were much reduced back at the time of the equal or greater warmth of the Medieval Warm Period."

Thursday, November 25, 2010

ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2010) — Conservationists have warned that carbon emission reduction strategies such as REDD may undermine, not enhance, long-term prospects for biodiversity conservation in the tropics.

Their warning comes only days ahead of the Cancun COP 16 climate change talks (Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, 2010).
REDD is a United Nations designed mechanism for carbon emission trading that provides financial compensation to developing countries for improved management and protection of their forest resources. If it works, REDD could strengthen the global fight against climate change, and create an opportunity for carbon-rich tropical countries to protect threatened biodiversity as a co-benefit of maintaining forests and the carbon they store.

Writing in the journal Carbon Balance and Management, a network of conservation scientists, including University of Kent's Dr Matthew Struebig, use data for Indonesia, a species-rich tropical country and the world's third largest source of carbon emissions, to highlight ways in which emission reduction strategies could turn sour for wildlife.

An article posted this week on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPPC) website shows "that for a broad swath of the midsection of the United States stretching from the center of Texas all the way to the U.S. border with Canada (and probably some distance beyond), the supposedly unprecedented warming of the 20th century (according to claims of the world's climate alarmists) was not unprecedented at all, having likely been surpassed one thousand, two thousand and four to five thousand years ago, when there was much less CO2 in the air than there is today. This observation thus begs the question of what was the cause of those earlier warmer-than-present periods. The answer of Nordt et al. is that "these warm intervals ... exhibit a strong correlation to increases in solar irradiance," as per the irradiance reconstruction of Perry and Hsu (2000):

Solar Irradiance Reconstruction of Perry and Hsu

Based on isotopic soil carbon measurements made on 24 modern soils and 30 buried soils scattered between latitudes 48 and 32°N and longitudes 106 and 98°W, Nordt et al. developed a time series of C4 vs. C3 plant dynamics for the past 12 ka (ka = 1000 14C yr BP) in the mixed and shortgrass prairie of the U.S. Great Plains; and because, as they describe it, the percent soil carbon derived from C4 plants "corresponds strongly with summer temperatures as reflected in the soil carbon pool (Nordt et al., 2007; von Fischer et al., 2008)," they were able to devise a history of the relative warmth of the climate of the region over this protracted period.

Nordt et al.'s data suggest that their region of study was slightly warmer than it has yet to be in modern times during parts of both the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods, and that it was significantly warmer during a sizeable portion the mid-Holocene Thermal Maximum or Climatic Optimum, as it is sometimes called."

OSLO, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The world will seek to break a U.S.-China standoff and agree modest steps to rein in global warming at U.N. talks in Mexico next week amid worries that the first climate treaty since 1992 may still be years away.

Most nations have few hopes for the meeting of environment ministers from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 in the Caribbean resort of Cancun after U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders failed to agree a treaty at last year's U.N. Copenhagen summit.

Sights are lower for Cancun, which will test the ability of the United Nations to reconcile the interests of China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters, and those of 192 other nations in a 21st century world order. All have a veto.

"We have to take a few steps forward or there are people who are going to lose faith in the U.N. system," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists.

"I'm a little depressed about Cancun," said Al Gore, the climate campaigner and former U.S. Vice President. "The problem is not going away, it's getting steadily worse."

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

From lulu.com:Even before publication, Slaying the Sky Dragon was destined to be the benchmark for future generations of climate researchers. This is the world's first and only full volume refutation of the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming. Nine leading international experts methodically expose how willful fakery and outright incompetence were hidden within the politicized realm of government climatology. Applying a thoughtful and sympathetic writing style, the authors help even the untrained mind to navigate the maze of atmospheric thermodynamics. Step-by-step the reader is shown why the so-called greenhouse effect cannot possibly exist in nature. By deft statistical analysis the cornerstones of climate equations – incorrectly calculated by an incredible factor of three - are exposed then shattered. This volume is a scientific tour de force and the game-changer for international environmental policymakers as well as being a joy to read for hard-pressed taxpayers everywhere.

Dr. Roy Spencer illustrates the magnitude of poorly-understood cloud effects on climate in his new book, "The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling."

As also noted in a paper presented earlier this year by physicist Dr. Horst Borchert, satellite measurements show that global warming between about 1980 to 2008 was "not anthropogenic but caused by natural activities of the Sun’s surface" via the GCR-climate relationship.

Abstract. The effect of the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) flux on Earth's climate is highly uncertain. Using a novel sampling approach based around observing periods of significant cloud changes, a statistically robust relationship is identified between short-term GCR flux changes and the most rapid mid-latitude (60°–30° N/S) cloud decreases operating over daily timescales; this signal is verified in surface level air temperature (SLAT) reanalysis data. A General Circulation Model (GCM) experiment is used to test the causal relationship of the observed cloud changes to the detected SLAT anomalies. Results indicate that the anomalous cloud changes were responsible for producing the observed SLAT changes, implying that if there is a causal relationship between significant decreases in the rate of GCR flux (~0.79 GU, where GU denotes a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days) and decreases in cloud cover (~1.9 CU, where CU denotes a change of 1% cloud cover in four days), an increase in SLAT (~0.05 KU, where KU denotes a temperature change of 1 K in four days) can be expected. The influence of GCRs is clearly distinguishable from changes in solar irradiance and the interplanetary magnetic field. However, the results of the GCM experiment are found to be somewhat limited by the ability of the model to successfully reproduce observed cloud cover. These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship. From this analysis we conclude that a GCR-climate relationship is governed by both short-term GCR changes and internal atmospheric precursor conditions.

While the next climate summit in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this month will make a show of sifting the geopolitical wreckage from last December’s climate summit, any real prospect for coordinated international action is, post-Copenhagen, dead in the political water. As if that were not enough, the bête noire of climate alarmists, King Coal, is, once again, reigning supreme.

All of which begs the question: with all hopes for a global CO2 impact blown away, why are politicians tenaciously clinging to the fiction that regionalised carbon trading schemes – like the Western Climate Initiative – can succeed where national and international ones have failed?

Speaking to Energy Tribune, Dalibor Rohac, Research Fellow at London’s Legatum Institute which produces the annual Legatum Global Prosperity Index, explains, “If you believe that CO2 emissions are a major factor driving climate change you need to reduce emissions globally. Cutting emissions unilaterally through, say, increasing the price of carbon in one country or group of countries, leads to carbon leakage as carbon-intensive industries will move to jurisdictions where emissions are not restricted.”

Without international and national binding agreements the reluctance of industry to participate is already reflected in the slow death of carbon trading initiatives.

CCX closing – ECX next?

By the end of the year, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the only U.S. national carbon market which trades all six greenhouse gases, will quietly close its doors to its carbon credits business – the main purpose for which it was set up. Not that this major turning point warranted much coverage in the mainstream media which has made a new genre out of the war on CO2. While the Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange only purchased the CCX last April, its voluntary but legally binding system has reportedly ground to a halt in the absence of a federally-enacted cap and trade scheme.

Meanwhile, across the water the European Climate Exchange (ECX), the leading platform for the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, is still trading. But when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 with its requirement for mandatory carbon caps, it is widely expected to go the way of its Chicago sister – and a new British report makes clear why.

According to the report by Sandbag, a group calling for even tighter greenhouse controls, the entire five-year period of the EU’s ETS is set to deliver miniscule carbon savings of less than one third of 1 per cent of total emissions. The world’s oldest carbon trading scheme has simply failed to make any serious impact on global carbon emissions, the purpose for which all such schemes exist.

In June 2010, Japan put on hold plans to introduce emission trading laws. Australia has delayed any decision on a carbon trading scheme until 2013 at the earliest and at the Copenhagen conference India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh stated flatly, “India will not accept any emission reduction target – period.”

In North America, however, local politicians still insist that regional initiatives, including the Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the east of the United States and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) in the west and Canada, could prosper. The WCI, for instance, is a partnership of seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. The WCI wants to establish a cap and trade system by January 2012 that, ultimately, aims to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

“This is simply puzzling,” says Rohac. “Regional initiatives are unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on global emissions and therefore on climate change.” Read more

USA Today:
An influential 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say.

Review of the 91-page report by three experts contacted by USA TODAY found repeated instances of passages lifted word for word and what appear to be thinly disguised paraphrases.

USA Today:The charges of plagiarism don't negate one of the basic premises of the report — that climate scientists used poor statistics in two widely noted papers.

But the allegations come as some in Congress call for more investigations of climate scientists like the one that produced the Wegman report.

"It kind of undermines the credibility of your work criticizing others' integrity when you don't conform to the basic rules of scholarship," Virginia Tech plagiarism expert Skip Garner says.

UPI:While claims of plagiarism don't affect the report's basic conclusion, that climate scientists had used unreliable data in two widely disseminated papers on global warming, they come at an awkward time for some in Congress urging more investigations of climate scientists involved in the global warming debate.

"It kind of undermines the credibility of your work criticizing others' integrity when you don't conform to the basic rules of scholarship," Virginia Tech plagiarism expert Skip Garner says.

USA Today:
"The report was integral to congressional hearings about climate scientists," says Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. "And it preceded a lot of conspiratorial thinking polluting the public debate today about climate scientists."

The report was requested in 2005 by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, then the head of the House energy committee. Barton cited the report in an October letter to The Washington Post when he wrote that Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann's work was "rooted in fundamental errors of methodology that had been cemented in place as 'consensus' by a closed network of friends."

Lisa Miller, a spokeswoman for Barton, reiterated the congressman's support of the Wegman report on Monday, saying it "found significant statistical issues" with climate studies.

UPI:
"The report was integral to congressional hearings about climate scientists," Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington said. "And it preceded a lot of conspiratorial thinking polluting the public debate today about climate scientists."

The report was requested in 2005 by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, then head of the House energy committee.

Lisa Miller, a spokeswoman for Barton, said the congressman still supports the Wegman report, saying it "found significant statistical issues" with climate studies.

California voters recently defeated a proposition to stop the implementation of the state's 'anti-global warming' law AB32, and will now pay a steep price estimated to be $3,857 per household per year. California's go-it-alone law will additionally cost the state about 1 million jobs for a benefit of nine hundred thousandths of one degree global warming supposedly averted. The proposition to stop AB32 was defeated thanks to green energy venture capitalists spending 3 times the amount raised in support, and use of false advertising claiming that limiting of CO2 production by AB32 would decrease rates of asthma, cancer, and lung disease.

During the recent election, the spin on Proposition 23 became drearily familiar. Voters who favored it were backing “greedy oil companies,” as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put it, out to protect their own financial interests. Those who opposed the measure, on the other hand, supported Clean Energy, The Environment and, of course, A Brighter Future for the Planet.

Unfortunately, things are not quite that simple.

The backers of Prop. 23, oil refiners Valero and Tesoro, got plenty of publicity as “out of state” entities, which apparently made them nefarious. That charge was not true of some Prop. 23 opponents, many also from out of state, though in their case the media spin did not hold their residency against them. The opponents of Prop. 23 spent more than three times as much than the oil refiners who supported the measure. In some cases, the opponents were supporting their own financial interests.

The largest contributor by far to No on 23 was Thomas Steyer, a hedge fund manager who has billions of dollars tied up in renewable energy ventures. He donated more than $5 million to the cause, more than either the Tesoro or Valero on the other side. An additional $2 million came from a number of venture capitalists who are betting on government subsidies to pay for their investments.

Also escaping notice during the midterm election was AB 32 itself, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which seeks to turn back the clock to carbon emission levels of 1990, whatever the consequences for the economy. Even California’s Legislative Analyst noted that “the scoping plan includes an inconsistent and incomplete evaluation of the costs and savings associated with its recommendations.” Prop. 23 would have delayed implementation of AB 32 until the unemployment rate dropped to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, safeguarding economic productivity while also addressing California’s markedly high energy prices.

The unemployment rate in California is currently more than 12 percent and shows no sign of abating. The state budget deficit is now some $25 billion, also among the worst in the country. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is not likely to improve these dire conditions. In fact, even ardent supporters of renewable energy, who stand to gain from AB 32, understood the unintended consequences and supported Prop. 23.

T.J. Rodgers, chairman of SunPower Corporation, the second-largest U.S. producer of solar cells, explained in the Wall Street Journal that: “The basic premise of AB 32 fails a grade-school math test. Green jobs, because of the subsidies and regulations that surround them, are often economic losers. And there is no guarantee that new green jobs will even be domestic.”

Conservative estimates show that the shift in energy spending will result in a higher cost to California households of $3,857 per year, or a total of $52.2 billion for all households combined. Based on the principles of consumer psychology, the decline in disposable income will mean either a higher cost for the customer or a reduction in spending in “other areas” leading to overall lost profits to businesses. Conditions will be tough for small businesses, which comprise 99.2 percent of all employer firms, account for 90 percent of new job creation and contribute roughly 75 percent of gross state product.

In the usual pattern, the state likes to impose measures that bring some up-front benefits, with politicians conveniently kicking the costs and consequences down the road. AB 32 reverses that dynamic. It imposes the costs up front, and those are heavy costs indeed. The benefits come far in the future, if they happen at all.

Julie Kaszton is a policy fellow in Environmental Studies at the Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org).

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The claim that 'man-made' global warming leads to more intense tropical cyclones and hurricanes takes another blow...

According to the NIPCC, "In light of the findings of Song et al., plus those of the other scientists they cite, there would appear to be little doubt that the studies of Emanuel (2005) and Webster et al. (2005) - which climate alarmists long hailed as proof positive of their claim that global warming leads to more intense tropical cyclones/hurricanes - actually provide no such evidence at all."... Read More

Additional new material posted this week on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) Website:

The Past Half-Century of ENSO Behavior (16 Nov 2010)

Has it become more extreme? ... and what’s the significance of the answer? ... Read More

Lives Saved per Life Lost Due to Global Warming (16 Nov 2010)

The IPCC AR4 states with very high confidence that climate change contributes to increased mortality. However, the results from a new analysis from Christidis et al. (2010) reveal the IPCC’s “very-high-confidence” conclusion is woefully wrong ... Read More

Effects of Elevated CO2 and Temperature on Flowering Times of Asteraceae Species (16 Nov 2010)

What are the effects? ... and what are the implications of the results for prior interpretations of historical plant phenology observations? ... Read More

Two Millennia of Environmental-Disaster-Induced Wars in China (16 Nov 2010)

The IPCC contends that global warming is a threat to human societies in many ways. Authors Zhang et al. come to a somewhat different conclusion, that some countries or regions might actually benefit from increasing temperatures ... Read More

The Growth of Scots Pines in Northeast Spain (16 Nov 2010)

Scots pine basal area increment showed an overall increase of 84% during the 20th century, which trend was associated with increased atmospheric CO2 concentration ... Read More

Young trees grew faster in recent years than did young trees several decades ago such that “the effect of rising CO2 [was] to increase ring width by about 53%,” as a result of “a 19.2% increase in ambient CO2 levels during the growing season, from 315.8 ppm in 1958 (when CO2 records began) to 376.4 ppm in 2003.” ... Read More

ENSO Activity and Climate Change (17 Nov 2010)

The finding of “similar century-scale variability in climate archives from two El Niño-sensitive regions on opposite sides of the tropical Pacific strongly suggests that they are dominated by the low-frequency variability of ENSO-related changes in the mean state of the surface ocean in [the] equatorial Pacific.” And that “century-scale variability,” as the authors of this paper describe it, suggests that global warming typically tends to retard El Nino activity, while global cooling tends to promote it ... Read More

Intensified El Niños in the Central Equatorial Pacific (17 Nov 2010)

Are they caused by global warming? ... or do they contribute to it? ... Read More

Biological Effects of “Ocean Acidification” (17 Nov 2010)

They are probably not as bad as climate alarmists make them out to be ... Read More

Effects of Branch Warming on Tall, Mature Oak Trees (17 Nov 2010)

Changes in the phenologies of canopy leaves and acorn production from global warming yield some important results ... Read More

The billboard ad above leads one to believe that 'man-made' climate change is increasing 3rd world hunger and that donations to Oxfam are necessary to build "floating vegetable gardens" and to "keep their heads above water." But, let's look at the facts instead. Percentage of malnourished individuals in developing nations is now less than half that of the 1969-1971 cold period:

An invited paper submitted to the International Journal of Energy and the Environment written by two university professors from Portugal states the man-made global warming hypothesis ("AGW") is erroneous, that the current trend of low solar activity will lead to a new "Little Ice Age" by mid-century, and that wasteful, expensive, and unnecessary green fuels/green energy/carbon credits be abandoned in favor of "productive, economically viable and morally acceptable solutions."

Authors: Igor Khmelinskii and Peter Stallinga
Email addresses of all the authors: ikhmelin@ualg.pt,pjotr@ualg.pt

Abstract: Recent experimental works demonstrated that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis, embodied in a series of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global climate models, is erroneous. These works prove that atmospheric carbon dioxide contributes only very moderately to the observed warming, and that there is no climatic catastrophe in the making, independent on whether or not carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced. In view of these developments, we discuss climate predictions for the XXIst century. Based on the solar activity tendencies, a new Little Ice Age is predicted by the middle of this century, with significantly lower global temperatures. We also show that IPCC climate models can't produce any information regarding future climate, due to essential physical phenomena lacking in those, and that the current budget deficit in many EU countries is mainly caused by the policies promoting renewable energies and other AGW-motivated measures.
In absence of any predictable adverse climate consequences of carbon dioxide emissions, and with no predictable shortage of fossil fuels, we argue for recalling of all policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions and usage of expensive renewable energy sources. The concepts of carbon credits, green energy and green fuels should be abandoned in favor of productive, economically viable and morally acceptable solutions.

Special (Invited) Session: Climate Change in the XXIst Century: Mechanisms and Predictions

Thursday, November 18, 2010

TESTIMONY OF PATRICK J. MICHAELS TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, NOVEMBER 17, 2010

Thank you for inviting my testimony. I am a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. This testimony represents no official point of view from either of these institutions and is tendered with the traditional protections of academic freedom.

My testimony has four objectives

1) Demonstration that the rate greenhouse-related warming is clearly below the mean of climate forecasts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that are based upon changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that are closest to what is actually being observed,

2) demonstration that the Finding of Endangerment from greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency is based upon a very dubious and critical assumption,

3) demonstration that the definition of science as a public good induces certain biases that substantially devalue efforts to synthesize science, such as those undertaken by the IPCC and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), and

4) demonstration that there is substantial discontent with governmental and intergovernmental syntheses of climate change and with policies passed by this House of Representatives.

Climate change is nothing new, even climate change induced by human activity. What matters is not whether or not something so obvious exists, but to what magnitude it exists and how people adapt to such change.For decades, scientists have attempted to model the behavior of our atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are added above the base levels established before human prehistory. The results are interesting but are highly dependent upon the amount of carbon dioxide that resides in the atmosphere, something that is very difficult to predict long into the future with any confidence. It is safe to say that no one—no matter whether he or she works for the government, for industry, or in education—can tell what our technology will be 100 years from now. We can only say that if history is to be any guide, it will be radically different from what we use today and that therefore projecting greenhouse gas emissions so far into the future is, to choose a word carefully, useless.

One thing we are certain of, though, is that the development of future technologies depends upon capital investment, and that it would be foolish to continue to spend such resources in expensive programs that will in fact do nothing significant to global temperature.Fortunately, despite the doomsaying of several, we indeed have the opportunity to not waste resources now, but instead to invest them much further in the future. That is because the atmosphere is clearly declaring that the response to changes in carbon dioxide is much more modest that what appears to be the consensus of scientific models.

Figure 1 shows the community of computer model projections from the IPCC‘s midrange scenario. Observed changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations correspond closer to this one than to others. You will note one common characteristic of these models: they predict warmings of a relatively constant rate. This is because, in large part, the response of temperature to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic (meaning that equal incremental increases produce proportionally less warming as concentration increases), while the increase in carbon dioxide itself is a low- order exponent rather than a straight line. This combination tends to produce constant rates of warming.

The various models just produce different quasi-constant rates. Divining future warming then becomes rather easy. Do we have a constant rate of warming? And if so, then we know the future rate, unless the functional form of all of these models is wrong. And if this is wrong, scientists are so ignorant of this problem, that you are wasting your time in soliciting our expertise. {see remainder of testimony here}

...An additional and important discrepancy between the models and reality extends into the lower atmosphere as well. In the lower atmosphere, climate models expectations are that the degree of warming with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations should be greater than that experienced at the surface, with the lower atmosphere warming about 1.4 times faster than the average surface temperature. Despite claims that observations and models are in agreement (Santer et al., 2008), new analyses incorporating a large number of both observational datasets as well as climate model projections, clearly and strongly demonstrate that the surface warming (which itself is below the model mean) is significantly outpacing the warming in the lower atmosphere—contrary to climate model expectations. Instead of exhibiting 40% more warming than the surface, the lower atmosphere is warming 25% less—a statistically significant difference (Christy et al., 2010).

Dr. Michaels also concludes, "Consequently EPA‘s core statement (as well as that of the IPCC and the CCSP), “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations”, is not supported."

Abstract: A 450 year spring-summer flood layer time series at seasonal resolution has been established from the varved sediment record of Lake Ammersee (southern Germany), applying a novel methodological approach. The main results are (1) the attainment of a precise chronology by microscopic varve counting, (2) the identification of detrital layers representing flood-triggered fluxes of catchment material into the lake, and (3) the recognition of the seasonality of these flood layers from their microstratigraphic position within a varve. Tracing flood layers in a proximal and a distal core and correlating them by application of the precise chronology provided information on the depositional processes. Comparing the seasonal flood layer record with daily runoff data of the inflowing River Ammer for the period from 1926 to 1999 allowed the definition of an approximate threshold in flood magnitude above which the formation of flood layers becomes very likely. Moreover, it was possible for the first time to estimate the “completeness” of the flood layer time series and to recognize that mainly floods in spring and summer, representing the main flood seasons in this region, are well preserved in the sediment archive. Their frequency distribution over the entire 450 year time series is not stationary but reveals maxima for colder periods of the Little Ice Age when solar activity was reduced. The observed spring-summer flood layer frequency further shows trends similar to those of the occurrence of flood-prone weather regimes since A.D. 1881, probably suggesting a causal link between solar variability and changes in midlatitude atmospheric circulation patterns.

Received 7 July 2009; accepted 9 August 2010; published 17 November 2010.

Related: Recent worldwide droughts have also been mild compared to other periods over the past 500 years:

Monday, November 15, 2010

From Greenie Watch: Paper located here
It is by De Jager and Duhau. Page 99 onwards is probably the most interesting part. I haven't been able to download any part of it and Google does not know of it but it is a chapter in a book about global warming in the 21st century. The authors are students of what goes on in the sun, with particular reference to solar cycles. They find that solar activity has a large influence on earth's temperature, with only a third of one degree of global warming over the last 400 years NOT predictable from solar activity. And that component could well be due to errors of measurement on the ground.

Of greatest interest, however, they say that we have just finished a grand maximum of temperature and are now headed downhill for a grand minimum -- with a forecast drop of around 4 degrees this century. That's roughly the inverse of what the IPCC predict (a median rise of about 4 degrees) Given the high degree of correlation between solar activity and terrestrial temperature that the authors report, their prediction is many orders of magnitude more reliable than the output of the chaotic IPCC models that discount any influence from the sun. So global cooling here we come!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Quotes I never expected to see in a New York Times mostly-alarmist climate article on the ice sheets:

Global warming skeptics, on the other hand, contend that any changes occurring in the ice sheets are probably due to natural climate variability, not to greenhouse gases released by humans...

Strictly speaking, scientists have not proved that human-induced global warming is the cause of the changes. They are mindful that the climate in the Arctic undergoes big natural variations. In the 1920s and ’30s, for instance, a warm spell caused many glaciers to retreat. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is often critical of mainstream climate science, said he suspected that the changes in Greenland were linked to this natural variability, and added that he doubted that the pace would accelerate as much as his colleagues feared. For high predictions of sea-level rise to be correct, “some big chunks of the Greenland ice sheet are going to have to melt, and they’re just not melting that way right now,” Dr. Christy said.

TASIILAQ, Greenland — With a tense pilot gripping the stick, the helicopter hovered above the water, a red speck of machinery lost in a wilderness of rock and ice.

To the right, a great fjord stretched toward the sea, choked with icebergs. To the left loomed one of the immense glaciers that bring ice from the top of the Greenland ice sheet and dump it into the ocean.

Hanging out the sides of the craft, two scientists sent a measuring device plunging into the water, between ice floes. Near the bottom, it reported a temperature of 40 degrees. It was the latest in a string of troubling measurements showing that the water was warm enough to melt glaciers rapidly from below.

“That’s the highest we’ve seen this far up the fjord,” said one of the scientists, Fiammetta Straneo.

The temperature reading was a new scrap of information in the effort to answer one of the most urgent — and most widely debated — questions facing humanity: How fast is the world’s ice going to melt?

Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.

A scientist writing for an Italian climate blog has 2 recent posts illustrating 7 reasons why the laws of physics have been used incorrectly to describe the so-called greenhouse effect. Most of these points have been repeatedly covered here, but for those interested in another refutation added to the now more than 30 from other scientists who have dis-proven conventional greenhouse theory, here are the 2 posts (use Google translation):

From the conclusion of Part 2 "The Greenhouse Effect in Wonderland" (Google translation + editing):

To summarize, here are the fundamental physical laws that the greenhouse effect theory violates, or poorly applies:

- 1st law of thermodynamics (it is impossible to create new energy from "back radiation")

- 2nd law of thermodynamics (colder bodies such as the atmosphere cannot raise the temperature of the warmer bodies such as the Earth's surface)

- Failure to use the carriers in the calculation of heat flow (a heat flow input can never be added to an output, but must be subtracted)

- Non-use of the Poynting vector (when two opposing heat fluxes EM waves are opposite, they have two directions of opposite propagation, and one must use vector analysis)

- Entropy (all exchanges of heat on Earth and the atmosphere require entropy to increase, which is incompatible with a hypothetical "greenhouse effect" -which requires entropy to decrease in order for heat to flow from cold to hot)

- Disregard for negative feedback of "cloud forcing" (makes no sense consider only the effect of heat retention of clouds, humidity and CO2, when these "greenhouse gases" are also an obvious sunshade of incoming solar radiation (45% LWIR), the effect of which exceeds heat retention)

- Boltzmann constant and Kirchhoff's law applied incorrectly (you can not apply the Boltzmann constant to rotating solids such as the planets and satellites, because the experimental data show that such simplistic calculations are incorrect).

In relation to climate change issues, two recent initiatives on the part of the Deutsche Bank Group give grounds for concern.

(1) In September, the Bank's 'Climate Change Advisors' issued a document entitled Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments: it was authored by three climate scientists at Columbia University. In an editorial introduction, the Bank's Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research describes it as “a balanced, detailed and expert assessment of the scientific case for climate change that will help investors navigate these extremely complex issues”.

The document's claims to accuracy as a navigational guide were promptly put in question by Ross McKitrick, one of the 'skeptics' supposedly disposed of within it. McKitrick's paper, entitled Response to Misinformation from Deutsche Bank, is dated 12 September. It identifies and spells out an array of errors and misrepresentations.

In response, the authors of the document have now put out a new text which supersedes the original. In this new version they have added a three-page Response to McKitrick where they admit to a few 'mischaracterizations' and offer amended versions of three sentences that they acknowledge to have been misleading. However, the original wording of these faulty sentences remains unchanged and unfootnoted in an unaltered main text: McKitrick has described this behaviour as 'unsporting', while others might characterise it as unprofessional.

In a second piece, dated 8 November, McKitrick has responded to the revised report. In this paper he extends and reinforces his critique. Viewed together, his twin presentations appear as unanswerable. As a guide to investors, or indeed for any other purpose, the document is worthless.

It would be interesting to know whether the Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted.

Looking at the list, it would seem that so such person is to be found among the eminent individuals who make up the Deutsche Bank's Climate Advisory Board: all appear as people who are (to quote a nice phrase from Clive Crook) 'precommitted to the urgency of the climate cause'. A more representative Board, spanning a wider range of opinions. might have taken more trouble to ensure that any published work issued under its auspices would measure up to professional standards.

(2) In the recent Californian elections, voters were invited to accept or reject Proposition 23, which would have placed strict constraints on the state government's plans to introduce further curbs on CO2 emissions. A few days before the vote, a Financial Times report noted that:

'Sixty-eight big investors, managing $415bn in assets, have united to urge Californians to vote against efforts to roll back the state's carbon legislation ... Signatories include ... Deutsche Bank Climate Advisers ...'

If this report is correct, it would seem that its Climate Advisory Board took a strong position on the Bank's behalf on a controversial political matter.

As its website confirms, Deutsche Bank is fully is committed to Corporate Social Responsibility. How far its current handling of climate change issues can be judged to be responsible is open to debate.

Professor David Henderson is the Chairman of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council. His latest publication on climate change issues has just appeared in the quarterly Newsletter of the Royal Economic Society.

Friday, November 12, 2010

By Professor Cliff Ollier, School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia

John Le Mesurier’s recent article in On Line Opinion, “The Creeping Menace”, re-hashes the alarmism about rising sea levels. Much has happened, however, since Al Gore scared the world with visions of metre high seas flooding New York.

First, there is still no proof the Earth is experiencing “dangerous” warming. Temperatures have levelled off since 1998. Many measuring locations are also located in unsuitable areas. Furthermore, the methodologies of averaging temperature are inconsistent and full of problems. This is why “Global Warming” was replaced as a slogan by “Climate Change” (nobody denies that climate changes), and more recently by “Climate Disruption” (which is impossible define or prove).

Second, the increased temperature is supposed to increase sea level mainly by melting the ice-caps, which is impossible. Thermal expansion of the oceans seems to be of little consequence at present because the satellite measurements show the oceans are cooling. Le Mesurier gilds his picture with a few asides on “extreme climatic events” in general and hurricanes in particular. Recent studies, however, show no increase in hurricane activity in the last 40 years.

With regard to sea level, I have come to the view the IPCC and Australian Bureau of Meteorology, run by CSIRO, are unreliable sources of data after critically assessing their statements on this subject for some time. Direct studies of sea level are showing only small rises. You can see the sea level data for yourself for the United States and a few other countries here. Most stations show a rise of sea level of about 2mm per year, but note the considerable variation even within a single state.

Models depend on what is put into them. For example, a 2009 report by the CSIRO for the Victorian Government’s Future Coasts Program on The Effect of Climate Change on Extreme Sea Levels in Port Phillip Bay based its model on temperature projections to 2100 of up to 6.4 degrees. That is the most extreme, fuel intensive, scenario of the IPCC and implies unbelievable CO2 concentration levels in 2100 of approximately 1550 parts per million (expressed in CO2 equivalent). Usage of all known fossil fuel reserves would only achieve half of this and continuation of the current rate of increase in concentration levels would result in only 550ppm by 2100.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2010) — The steamiest places on the planet are getting warmer. Conservative estimates suggest that tropical areas can expect temperature increases of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Does global warming spell doom for rainforests? Maybe not.

Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and colleagues report in the journal Science that nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today's levels.

"We're going to have a novel climate scenario," said Joe Wright, staff scientist at STRI, in a 2009 Smithsonian symposium on Threats to Tropical Forests. "It will be very hot and wet, and we don't know how these species are going to react." By looking back in time, Jaramillo and collaborators identified one example of a hot, wet climate: rainforests were doing very well.

Researchers examined pollen trapped in rock cores and outcrops -- from Colombia and Venezuela -- formed before, during and after an abrupt global warming event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that occurred 56.3 million years ago. The world warmed by 3-5 degrees C. Carbon dioxide levels doubled in only 10,000 years. Warm conditions lasted for the next 200,000 years.

Contrary to speculation that tropical forests could be devastated under these conditions, forest diversity increased rapidly during this warming event.New plant species evolved much faster than old species became extinct. Pollen from the passionflower plant family and the chocolate family, among others, were found for the first time.

"It is remarkable that there is so much concern about the effects of greenhouse conditions on tropical forests," said Klaus Winter, staff scientist at STRI. "However, these horror scenarios probably have some validity if increased temperatures lead to more frequent or more severe drought as some of the current predictions for similar scenarios suggest."

Evidence from this study indicates that moisture levels did not decrease significantly during the warming event. Overall results indicate that tropical forests fared very well during this short and intense warming period.

"The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute celebrates '100 Years of Tropical Science in Panama' starting this year," said Eldredge Bermingham, STRI director. "Today, our scientists are working in more than 40 countries worldwide. We have the long-term and global monitoring experiments in place to begin to evaluate scenarios predicting the effects of climate change and other large-scale processes on tropical forests."

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Article by John O’Sullivan and Val Majkus (via email from John O'Sullivan)

Global warmers in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as new study shows one third of temperatures not reliable.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOMclaim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.

Barnham, who spent 8 years working in emerging South Asian economies building high volume transaction processing systems, applied a high-tech statistical technique very different from an earlier well-publicized probe by fellow Aussie, Ken Stewart on his blog, Ken’s Kingdom.

Stewart grabbed headlines in what became known as the Australiagate controversy after his findings were featured on popular science blog, Watts Up With That. Stewart exposed dubious BOM adjustments to temperature data that bore little or no resemblance to actual or rawpast temperatures.

Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Although the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) collapsed and shut down this week, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management LLP pocketed approximately $17.8 million on it's 2.98% share of the exchange when it was sold to the publicly traded Intercontinental Exchange a mere 6 months ago. According to news reports, the brainchild of the exchange, academic Richard Sandor, founded the exchange with a foundation gift of $1.1 million, and pocketed $98.5 million for his 16.5% share of the CCX. This would place the value of Gore's firm's stake at almost $18 million. Note Gore is the founder, chairman, and largest shareholder in Generation Investment Management LLP. Barack Obama was on the Joyce Foundation Board when it provided the funding to establish the CCX. Maurice Strong, founding head of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), precursor to the IPCC, was a CCX board member.

The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar "cap and trade" market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration's effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.

"It is dead for the foreseeable future," said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.

That assessment was echoed by environmentalists as well.

"Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which had supported the plan.

The CCX was set up in 2000 in anticipation of the United States joining Europe and other countries around the world to create a market that would reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Under the system, factories, utilities and other businesses would be given an emissions target. Those that emitted less fewer regulated gases than their target could sell the "excess" to someone who was above target. Each year, the target figures would be reset lower.

The Exchange was the brainchild of Richard Sandor, an economist and professor at Northwestern University, and it was modeled after a successful program that was launched in 1990 and helped control acid rain in the Midwest. It was initially funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Joyce Foundation of Chicago, and President Obama was a board member at the time.

After the Democrats won the White House, the House and the Senate in 2008, businesses and investors flocked to the exchange, believing Congress would quickly approve the program. And it almost happened.

The House of Representatives passed a bill proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, which would have made cap and trade law. But the Senate couldn't muster the votes, and everything went downhill from there.

"When those that voted for the measure in 2009 went home on July 4th after the vote, they met widespread outrage among their constituents," said Nick Loris, an analyst with Heritage Foundation. Conservatives renamed the idea "cap and tax," and they began an assault on the program.

In the last week, following the Nov. 2 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, the slide became an avalanche. Investors in CCX, including Sandor and former Vice President Al Gore, sold the exchange to a company involved in commodities trading.

Sale records show that Sandor cleared more than $90 million for his 16 percent stake in the company.

Meanwhile, the White House has dropped all references to cap and trade from its web site; and, unlike the heralded climate summit in Copenhagen last year, a 10-day meeting in Mexico beginning Nov. 29 on the next steps to battle global warming has not even mentioned publicly by the administration.

"The pieces of the puzzle just kept breaking off," Loris said. "And Obama has given up on it.”

But both Loris and Ebell say that isn't necessarily cause for celebrating.

"I would like to have a party and say we won, but the truth is were are still in the middle of it," Ebell said. "The problem is now that the administration changed strategy and is using existing laws and regulations, like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and EPA regulations to implement its agenda. And unlike the cap and trade effort, it is much harder to get the public excited about rule changes."

"Obama will try a piecemeal approach," Loris said. "And they have a much better chance of becoming law than cap and trade ever did.”

Republicans in the new Congress, for their part, will try to pass a law "to stop all regulation of greenhouse gases using existing legal authority," Ebell said. "And we are pretty sure we can get 60 votes in the Senate on it."